Ask HN: UTCP and Payments, should we standardize anything?
5 comments
Payments are a flow-based and rule-based deterministic part of an order. There is no AI decision making involved for them.
The role that AI can honestly play here is in collecting payment information, e.g. a credit card number, checking account number, or providing information for a cryptocurrency transfer, but that's not the same as executing the payment itself.
The AI's job is to dispatch the order with the payment information, and that is all.
The role that AI can honestly play here is in collecting payment information, e.g. a credit card number, checking account number, or providing information for a cryptocurrency transfer, but that's not the same as executing the payment itself.
The AI's job is to dispatch the order with the payment information, and that is all.
the problem concretely is that they currently cannot get the right authentication for checking out, or sending a payment, because it is not standardized
so the question is, how can we help them achieve that?
so the question is, how can we help them achieve that?
Building in public is important for us, and we wanted to hear your take
We know that payments are an important part of agentic tool usage
However, right now, UTCP doesn't offer any possibility for the agent to use paid tools without human assistance.
So agents can’t self-provision/pay for API keys: humans do it and pass the token in.
So the question to you all is: Should UTCP define an interface/set a standard for third-party payments/getting auth so agents can safely obtain keys or pay per call via plugins.
And if so, how would that look like? How would you like the agents to be able to pay and how would you like your tools to be able to monetize themselves?
Options: 1. Stay out: leave payments/API keys to each tool and client to figure out, no standardization through the protocol 2. Define a way for tools to advertise how they can get paid through the manual, so agents can pay if the user approves: give us ideas on how you think this could be done, and how you would like it most
Goal: make paid tool usage practical for agents w/out human needing to go through a long process of getting the API key for everything. What are your thoughts?